Jehovah's Witnesses Trivia
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45 free Jehovah's Witnesses trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Jehovah's Witnesses are one of the most recognisable religious movements in the world, and this quiz covers the whole story: the Pittsburgh Bible study group Charles Taze Russell started in 1870, the convention in Columbus, Ohio, where the name was adopted in 1931, the magazines that became the most widely distributed on Earth, and the beliefs and practices that set the denomination apart. Easy questions ask what the meeting places are called and which two magazines members hand out; harder ones dig into the San Diego mansion built for resurrected patriarchs, the Supreme Court flag-salute case of 1943, the purple triangle of the Nazi camps and the year the Brooklyn headquarters were sold. It is written for anyone curious about religion, comparative-religion students and quiz nights that want something beyond the usual Bible round. The questions are factual and neutral: they describe what the movement teaches and how it is organised without arguing for or against it. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the denomination, its leaders, its publications and the legal cases involving it, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which central doctrine of most Christian churches do Jehovah's Witnesses reject as unbiblical?
The Trinity
The Trinity: Witnesses teach that Jesus is God's first creation, a separate and lesser being, and that the holy spirit is God's active force rather than a person.
Q 02In which Pennsylvania city did Charles Taze Russell gather the small group that grew into Jehovah's Witnesses?
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh was Russell's home: he was made a partner in his father's clothing shop there in his early teens, and he later sold the family stores and spent his fortune on printing and preaching.
Q 03What were Jehovah's Witnesses called before adopting that name in 1931?
Bible Students
Bible Students was the name Russell's followers used, and those who broke with his successor kept it: groups such as the Dawn Bible Students still publish and meet under it today.
Q 04The name Jehovah's Witnesses comes from a verse in which Old Testament prophet's book?
Isaiah
Isaiah 43:10 has God tell Israel 'Ye are my witnesses'. The King James Bible prints 'saith the LORD' in that verse, while the American Standard Version reads 'saith Jehovah'.
Q 05Which civic duty do Jehovah's Witnesses refuse on principle, a stand that has sent thousands of them to prison?
Military service
Military service: Witnesses take the prophecy of swords beaten into plowshares as a command, and held to it even in Nazi Germany, where military courts had more than 250 of them executed.
Q 06Which pop superstar became a Jehovah's Witness in 2001 and was known to knock on strangers' doors to preach?
Prince
Prince was won over by two years of debate with his friend the bassist Larry Graham, and called it less a conversion than a realization, 'like Morpheus and Neo in The Matrix'.
Q 07Which companion magazine to The Watchtower began life in 1919 as The Golden Age?
Awake!
Awake! is the magazine's third title, after The Golden Age and, from 1937, Consolation; once printed every two weeks, it has shrunk since 2022 to a single new issue a year.
Q 08What is the meeting place of a Jehovah's Witness congregation called?
Kingdom Hall
Kingdom Hall, never 'church': Witnesses say the Bible uses that word for the worshippers rather than the building, so their halls are plain meeting rooms with no crosses or other religious symbols.
Q 09Joseph Rutherford coined the name for the group's meeting halls in 1935 for a building in which US Pacific territory?
Hawaii
Hawaii: on a 1935 visit to Honolulu he set up a branch office and had a meeting place built beside it, and the name he gave that one building spread to Witness congregations around the world.
Q 10Which Bible version do Jehovah's Witnesses prefer to use?
New World Translation
New World Translation: it prints the name Jehovah 237 times in the New Testament, where the surviving Greek manuscripts say only 'Lord' or 'God', because Witnesses hold that the name was there originally.
Q 11Which New York venue hosted the Jehovah's Witnesses' huge international convention of 1950?
Yankee Stadium
Yankee Stadium: when the Witnesses came back in 1958, the final-day crowd of more than 250,000 overflowed the ballpark and filled the nearby Polo Grounds as well.
Q 12Jehovah's Witnesses became widely known for refusing which medical procedure on religious grounds?
Blood transfusions
Blood transfusions: Witnesses read the Bible's command to abstain from blood as ruling them out. In 2026 their leaders narrowed the ban to whole blood, leaving red cells, plasma and other components to each member's conscience.
Q 13Which medical practice did Watch Tower magazines denounce in the 1920s and 1930s, only to accept it in 1952?
Q 21What do Jehovah's Witnesses call their most important annual event?
The Memorial
The Memorial marks Jesus's death and is held once a year after sunset. Bread and wine pass along every row, yet in most halls nobody eats or drinks, because only those who count themselves 'anointed' may.
Q 22Jehovah's Witnesses hold their most solemn yearly meeting on the 14th day of which Jewish month, the date of Passover?
Nisan
Nisan 14 is the night Jesus held the Last Supper. The 2025 observance drew about 20.6 million people, more than twice the number of active Witnesses, since many who come never preach.
Q 23What term do Jehovah's Witnesses use for every member who takes an active part in preaching?
Publishers
Vaccination
Vaccination: in 1921 The Golden Age called it 'the most barbarous practice', and it was later condemned as a breach of God's law, until a Watchtower article ruled it a matter for each person to decide.
Q 14Which of these celebrations do Jehovah's Witnesses observe?
Wedding anniversaries
Wedding anniversaries are allowed. Birthdays are out, partly because the Bible's only two birthday feasts, Pharaoh's and Herod's, each end with someone being put to death.
Q 15What do Jehovah's Witnesses call the group of men that establishes all of the denomination's doctrines?
The Governing Body
The Governing Body took charge on January 1, 1976, ending the days when the Watch Tower Society's president alone decided doctrine; it has no permanent head, and its chairmanship rotates every year.
Q 16How many people do Jehovah's Witnesses believe will go to heaven to rule with Jesus?
144,000
144,000 is read as an exact head count from the Book of Revelation: that group is to reign from heaven as kings and priests, while everyone else who is saved lives forever on a restored earth.
Q 17What do Jehovah's Witnesses call the majority of the faithful who hope to live on a paradise earth?
The other sheep
The other sheep is Jesus's phrase in John 10:16 for followers 'not of this fold'. Witnesses apply it to believers who expect everlasting life on earth, and since 1935 new converts have been counted among them.
Q 18Jehovah's Witnesses say Jesus began ruling in heaven the year which war began?
World War I
World War I began in the summer of 1914, the year Russell had named decades earlier as the end of the 'Gentile Times', and Witnesses still point to the war as evidence that Christ's reign began then.
Q 19Rather than a cross, Jehovah's Witnesses teach that Jesus died on what?
A single upright post
A single upright post, or stake, is what they say the Bible describes. Yet a cross sat on the cover of The Watch Tower until October 1931, and only after that was it dropped as a pagan symbol.
Q 20Which archangel do Jehovah's Witnesses identify with Jesus?
Michael
Michael: Witnesses note that the Bible speaks of only one archangel, and that Paul has the returning Jesus call out 'with an archangel's voice', so they take the two to be one person.
Publishers are the only people the organisation counts as Witnesses: anyone who does no preaching is left out of its totals, which is why census figures usually come out higher.
Q 24By the group's own 2025 count, which country is home to the most Jehovah's Witnesses, about 1.25 million?
United States
United States, where the movement began, still leads, but the margin is modest: Brazil and Mexico each report close to 900,000 Witnesses, and both have more congregations than the US does.
Q 25What do Jehovah's Witnesses call members who commit to a set quota of preaching hours each month?
Pioneers
Pioneers pledge fixed hours of preaching. The keenest, 'special pioneers', are sent wherever preachers are scarce and join a religious order that gives them lodging and a small allowance but no salary.
Q 26What are Jehovah's Witnesses' branch offices and headquarters staff residences called?
Bethel
Bethel is Hebrew for 'House of God'. The thousands who staff these complexes are unpaid volunteers who live where they work and receive only food, lodging and a small allowance.
Q 27Where did the Watch Tower Society move its headquarters in 1909?
Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn, New York: Russell bought the old brownstone parsonage of the celebrated preacher Henry Ward Beecher to house his staff, and the headquarters stayed in the borough for more than a century.
Q 28What did Jehovah's Witnesses carry from door to door in the 1930s so householders could hear Rutherford's sermons?
A portable phonograph
A portable phonograph let any Witness play one of Rutherford's short recorded 'sermonettes' on a doorstep, on a street corner or in the living room of anyone willing to listen.
Q 29Which US president was raised in Kansas by a mother who was a devout Jehovah's Witness for fifty years?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower never joined the faith himself and left for West Point and a soldier's career, while his mother Ida stayed an active Witness in Abilene into her eighties.
Q 30Why did Watch Tower Society directors go to prison in 1918?
Sedition over an anti-war book
Sedition over an anti-war book: the Society's 1917 volume attacked clergy who backed the fighting, and eight leaders drew long sentences under the Espionage Act, only to walk free in 1919 and see the charges dropped.